


Selfish little girl

by Multifandom_damnation



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: BAMF Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Bad Parenting, Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield Bonding, Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield Have a Good Relationship, Billy Hargrove Is Bad at Feelings, Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Gen, Locked In, Neil Hargrove Being an Asshole, Protective Billy Hargrove, Protective Siblings, Punishment, Susan Mayfield Is a Bitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-14
Updated: 2019-12-14
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21767242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Multifandom_damnation/pseuds/Multifandom_damnation
Summary: Susan always said that she loved her daughter and that nothing would ever change that, but Max soon finds out that the only thing that could change it very quickly is pointing out how much of a prick her new step-father is, and taking Billy's side over Neil's. Susan doesn't deal with this very well, but thankfully, Billy will always be there to pick up the pieces and fix what his father broke.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield
Comments: 15
Kudos: 152





	Selfish little girl

**Author's Note:**

> I was being NICE to Susan before, BUT NOT ANY MORE, SHE'S A BITCH AND I HATE HER JUST AS MUCH AS NEIL.
> 
> So, I got a request for something I couldn't really understand, but I was halfway through this fic before I got confirmation SO this is just an accidental fic that I liked so much that I just couldn't get rid of it, so I hope you like it, and that you enjoy it as much as I did.

It was dark, and she was cold and she'd been crying for what seemed like hours.  
  
The lights in her bedroom didn't work after the lightbulb burst and nobody had bothered to fix it yet, and while it was one of the coldest winters that Hawkins had seen in a very long while, Neil and her mother had refused to turn the central heating on while they sat in luxury by the fireplace. She didn't even have any warmer clothes she could change into, considering her last set got shredded by a demo-dog and her parents had refused to buy her any more until she told them what had happened, which she really couldn't do.  
  
Max didn't regret what had happened. She'd watched Neil beat and berate Billy on his way out to work for the third time that week, and she'd just finally had enough. Seething, Max had stormed over, grabbed her mother by the arm with more force than she ever had before, pulled her away into the bathroom and whispered with more intensity than she expected, "Neil's an _asshole_."  
  
Susan had blinked liked Max had slapped her, her perfectly permed hair bobbing as she recoiled. "I- what?"  
  
"He's an asshole," Max hissed. "Can't you see it? He's the absolute _worst_. You shouldn't have married him."  
  
"Darling, don't be like that," Susan lowered her voice to match her daughter's, and her face grew a little sympathetic. "I know this isn't what you expected it to be, but this is a good thing for us. Really good. You might not see it yet, but you will."  
  
"It might be good for _you_ , but how do you think _I_ feel, watching my brother get beaten up every day just because his dad can't stand him?" Max bit back. "And I know you can see him, but you just ignore it and let it happen. Why do you do that? Why don't you ever step in and tell him to stop? Why do you always stand back and _watch_?"  
  
A look of exasperation crossed Susan's face. "Maxine, please, stop being so difficult. Neil puts food on the table, he pays our bills, he provides for us and he makes sure we have a roof over our head. Can't you just put up with him for a little bit longer? I promise you, it'll get better, and soon little things like that won't matter anymore."  
  
"You always say that I should accept that Neil's now my dad," Max said, seeing red. "But why can't you accept that Billy's now your son?"  
  
Susan sighed, "That's different, Max,"  
  
"Why is it different?"  
  
"Max, I'm not going to talk about this now," Susan said, shaking her head as she reached for the door handle. "Stop being so dramatic. Besides, you used to hate Billy. Why has that suddenly changed?"  
  
She was so angry that Max couldn't help but wonder if this was how Billy felt all the time. "Yeah, well, now I hate _Neil_ instead."  
  
The look that crossed Susan's face was frightening, and the sudden grip on Max's arm was just on the verge of too tight. "Stop being such a selfish little girl, Maxine."  
  
There was real, genuine anger in Susan's face, and Max had never seen her really be angry at her- not like this, anyway. "Let- let me go," she said as she tried and failed to yank her arm away.  
  
Suddenly, the bathroom door creaked open, and Neil stood there. In all her anger, Max hadn't heard the Camaro roar to life and squeal away down the road. "What's going on here?" It was angry, almost, but not like when he was angry at Billy. His voice was low, not explosive. The malice in his voice was thin and hidden, not explicit.  
  
"Oh, nothing dear," Susan's voice was fake and overly sweet. "Max here was just... voicing her concerns." Max wasn't too sure, but the way she said it made it sound like code.  
  
Neil lowered his eyes to meet Max's. His were narrow slits while hers were blown wide with fear. "Do you need me to take care of it?"  
  
"I don't think that's necessary, love," Susan smiled too-wide at Neil- too much _teeth_ and stretched-wide lips and bright red lipstick. "But I think a nice, long time-out would do her some good. Some time to reflect and think about the awful things she's been saying."  
  
And then Max had been grabbed roughly and dragged, kicking and screaming down the hallway until Neil chucked her into her dark bedroom and slammed the door in her face and held it shut while she threw her body against the door and yanked at the door handle, but the door didn't move an inch. Then she heard a chair from the kitchen being dragged down the hallway and the wooden back of it jammed under the handle so it didn't so much as twist.  
  
And then they left her there, screaming and crying for hours and hours until her throat was hoarse and her eyes were sore, and the darkness was overwhelming and the silence was stifling and-  
  
She had called Billy's name for the first few hours before her screaming had fallen into wordlessness, even though she knew he wouldn't hear her. It shocked her a little bit that after all they had gone through, his name was the first one she called for.  
  
Even when she was little, Max had never been afraid of the dark. But now, everything was different. She knew more about the things that hid in the shadows, and in her distress, the moving shadows looked like crawling nightmares from the Upside-Down.

She could still feel her mothers long nails digging into the meat of her arm, burning and stinging like a scalding iron, and if Max closed her eyes and let herself get lost in her panic, she could almost imagine that the once-gentle hands of her mother were that of a Demogorgon, and Max hated how easy that comparison was to make.

Honestly, she didn't mean to, but she panicked. She couldn't help it. She was alone in a cold, dark room, unsure if anyone could hear her screams, afraid that any moment now a creature from the abys would come screaming through her window and nobody would come to her aid because the people who cared weren't around and the people that were around... didn't care. Even if she screamed and screamed and screamed and begged for help until her last breath, she knew that her parents wouldn't even know she was dead until they opened the door and found her body, and then they'd have acted like she never cried out, never made a noise, not at all like they had locked her away for standing up for what she believed in.

At some point, she couldn't place exactly when, but she had started crying. Long, heavy sobs that wracked her body and made her hunch over with their intensity, and it was all she could do to hold herself together. She missed Lucas. She missed El. She missed Steve. She missed Robin. She missed _Billy_.

Max hadn't meant to love Billy. She'd wanted to hate him for the rest of her life, but when she watched him almost die on the cold, hard ground of the Starcourt Mall, and after she'd been at his bedside every day during his recovery in the hospital, he'd sort of... changed. At least, the Billy _before_ the Mind Flayer and the Billy _after_ the Mind Flayer were two different people. Maybe Billy just knew what it was like to be completely, utterly ruined from the inside out? Maybe he realized that the world was filled with worse demons than Neil? Whatever it was, Max liked this new Billy more than the old one, and couldn't bring herself to hate him no matter how hard she tried.

He'd pick her up and drop her off at places without question. He'd give some of the other kid's rides when Steve couldn't. He let her sleep with some of his things on her bad nights when she felt like the world was falling apart around her and that she was suffocating. He'd take her out for drives in the middle of the night just because she couldn't sleep. Billy was a better person now, and whether that had anything to do with the Mind Flayer ruining him, Max couldn't say. But she could say that she didn't necessarily hate it.

Deny it as she may, Max loved Billy, and she knew that though he would never actually say it, that he loved her too.

She wasn't sure when the crying stopped. She just convulsed and shook and wrapped her arms around herself to try and stave off the feeling of emptiness that seemed to resonate in her soul. She'd grown stiff with cold from where she kneeled on the floor near the door, and at one point, she had pulled all the covers off of her bed to try and warm herself up, but it didn't work. She had the kind of cold that she could feel right down to her bones.

It was around midnight when she heard the steady, comforting and familiar thrum of the Camaro drive down the street and turn into the driveway, and suddenly, Max found herself screaming again with new vigour, hammering away at the door with her fist and screaming Billy's name at the top of her lungs, even before the roar of the engine had turned off. 

Then she heard his heavy footsteps pelting down the hallway towards their bedrooms and she both heard and felt the chair being removed from under the door handle and thrown away to clatter against the ground, and then the door was being pulled open and she was falling forward and-

Billy must have taken in the tears on her desperate face, the snot dripping down her red nose, her bloodshot eyes, the distress in her features because he paused so suddenly that he might have been a glitching game at the arcade. "What the fuck?" was all he could say.

Max didn't give him time to say anything else. "Help," she whispered with as much pain as she could muster, and Billy sprung into action before Max could blink.

She was being lifted up and manhandled out the door before she even realized what was happening. She was so stiff and cold after being in that one position for so many hours that Billy had to pretty much carry her down the hallway and towards the garage. Susan and Neil were there, drinking wine near the roaring fireplace, but other than watching them pass with looks of indifference, they didn't try to get involved. That made Max's blood boil.

It all happened so quickly that suddenly Billy was sitting her in the passenger seat of his car and he lept over the hood to get to the driver's seat and they were pealing out of the garage and onto the street before Max could even think about what was happening.

They drove through the darkened roads towards the ruined Starcourt Mall that was still getting rebuilt, and he pulled into the parking lot and turned off the ignition before he turned to her. "Max? What in high hell was that?'

"A-am I..." Max could hardly get the words out, and Billy took off his leather jacket and threw it over her lap to use as a blanket when he saw her shaking. "Am I selfish? Am I just... am I the worst?"

Frowning, Billy reached out and rested a hand on her arm. "What- no? What are you..." he yanked his arm away and Max missed the contact. "Jesus, Max, you're freezing." he reached an arm out and cranked the heater on high and Max was momentarily shocked at the sudden blast of heat before she melted into it. "The house was boiling- why do you feel like a dead body?"

Shivering, Max wrapped Billy's jacket closer around herself. "Punishment, I guess. For saying thing's they didn't want to hear." she raised her eyes to meet Billy's stare. "I'm surprised you heard me."

"Suprised?" Billy asked, confused. "You were screaming like a banshee Max, there's no way in hell that I wouldn't have heard you."

"Oh," Max deflated. "I was sort of holding out hope that I just wasn't loud enough, because I'd been screaming and crying for ages, and neither mum or Neil never even pretended like they'd heard me, even though they were the ones to put me in there."

There was a spark of fury that flickered across Billy's features and eventually faded away to reside only in his eyes. Max used to be afraid of that spark, afraid of what it represented and what it could cause, but not any more. Not now that she knew what it felt like. "Slow down, Max. Why don't you start from the beginning and just tell me what happened before you throw me into the deep end, huh?"

Nodding, Max wiped at her nose and winced at the dried tears and snot that was cacked onto her skin and had begun to crack like mud. "You left for work, and I watched Neil hit you again like he always does, and then I caught my mum just standing there watching it all like it was the most normal thing in the world, and I pulled her away, and I told her that I didn't like him hitting you or her acting like it's a sport. She told me that it's normal and that I'd get used to it, and that Neil was the best thing to ever happen to us, and then I told her that I hated Neil and..." she trailed off, her tears preventing her from continuing.

"And then Neil locked you in your room and threw away the key," Billy filled in the blanks, realizing where the tale went but was caught off-guard by Max shaking her head.

"Not Neil," she whispered, head down. "Mum did it. Neil might have put me in there, but mum wanted it to happen, and she's the one who put the chair under the door. She's the one who said I needed to be put in time out and that I needed to be punished. This is all because of her. Not Neil."

To Max's surprise, Billy looked sympathetic as he ran his hand up and down her arm. "God, Max, I'm so sorry. But I can't lie to you- it only gets worse from here. This is how it starts. Calling you names, locking you up to think about your behaviour, making you question yourself. It's never going to get any better."

Max rubbed at raised marks her mother's nails left on her arm, and Billy watched her and covered it with his hand. She was glad that Billy had told her the truth, but it still hurt to think about. "Maybe I'll start calling mum 'Susan' now, like how you call your dad 'Neil'," she tried for a joke, but her laugh came out too forced and too fake, and she had to clamp a hand over her mouth to stop herself from crying.

"You could. That would certainly make her angry," Billy said quietly, and Max had never heard him so tender and so gentle in all her life. "Where do you want to go?"

She knew what he was asking. Did she want to go back home, to the parents who tossed her like yesterdays garbage? Or did she want to go somewhere else, like El's house, or Steve's place, or to see Dustin or Mike or Will or anyone, even _Lucas?_ Or he would take her anywhere else in the world. All she had to do was say the word, and she'd be there before the sun rose over the buildings in Hawkins. All she had to do was ask.

"Let's go home," she whispered. "To California."

Billy was silent. Max knew that she was being unfair- Billy wanted to go back to California more than anything, and that he'd been close to leaving a few times already, so asking him to take her back would have been a hard thing to resist. Which was partially why Max suggested it- because Billy wouldn't say no.

But to Max's surprise, Billy didn't turn the car back on and drive out of Hawkins. Instead, he said, "We could do that. Or, we could go back home, to Hawkins, and you could pretend like nothing ever happened, and in the morning I'll take you over to Hopper's place and you can spend time with his daughter. How does that sound?"

"But, I don't want to go back there," Max sniffled. "I want to leave."

"I know you do, but right now, you're too emotional," Billy said quietly. "If you leave right now, and never come back, how upset do you think El would be that her best friend just left her without saying goodbye? How would Lucas be? Or any of the other nerds you hang out with? You might be upset right now, but they're going to be even worse if you suddenly disappear without so much as leaving a note. They might think you were killed by one of those monsters or taken like your friend was. Or, they might think that I kidnapped you and come after us, and that probably won't end well for anyone."

The worst thing was that Max knew that Billy was right. "But- but what if I go back, and they try and lock me up again, or they get mad at me or something, or-"

A hiccup cut the rest of her words, and Billy took that opportunity to lean closer, so close that Max could smell the cologne he had put on before he left and the chlorine from the pool. "Max," he said earnestly, and Max suddenly felt like everything was alright in the world. "I'm not going to let that happen."

Somehow, Max believed him. "Ok," she said eventually. "Ok, we can go back."

"Well, I mean, we don't have to go back right away," Billy amended as he turned the ignition and the Camaro rumbled to life. "I'm sure there's a 7-11 nearby."

When they were finally on their way home, Max with her favourite flavour slushy in her lap and her eyes falling shut in exhaustion after how long and hard she'd been crying, Billy spoke up, and he was so quiet that Max had to strain to hear him over the Camaro's engine. "You're not selfish, Max. Never listen to anything you say, because they only say it to make you doubt yourself. But they won't hurt you ever again. I won't let them."

And somehow, for some strange reason, Max trusted every word he said.

**Author's Note:**

> If this whole thing is a bit strange, it's because my laptop shit itself and it's making scary exploding robot noises, so I'm writing this ON the actual AO3 publishing page on a desktop that I added Grammarly to, and I'm not very good at using a desktop considering how used to a laptop I am, PLUS this started out on my phone, so SORRY


End file.
